Black Coombe – a painting a day

And now for something completely different: this is a picture of Black Coombe in the Southern Lake district the bit the tourist board decided to rechristen the Lake District Peninsulas. My sister lives in the area lucky thing and this is the view from Sandside which is one of the hamlets that form Kirkby in Furness. It’s a village on the Viking model apparently…hamlets separated by farmland in small fields.

I did this from an old sketch of mine, slightly bigger than a postcard. Black Coombe is not all that high Just under 2000 feet or 600m, but it stands or rather broods alone and can be seen from miles away. The furthest I have seen it from is the top of Blackpool Tower on a day when you could see the Isle of Man.

Just got called away and accused of hoarding illicit substances, he is tidying up in that, I will only do this once (per decade,) sort of way.

“Whats this?”

“Its spadja”

“Whats that?”,

”its a herb”,

“Is it dope?”

“No! Its spadja”,

“Talk English”,

“Its wild mountain sage for winter colds”

” Where did you get it ?”

“On a mountain in Greece…or Turkey”

“Shall I throw it away?”

“NO”

“Well it looks like there’s acorns in there too”

“Just put it back in the cupboard could you?”

I think the acorns mean it came from Turkey, I don’t use it often but it is really good with honey for a bad cold, I just haven’t had many bad colds lately so the spadja is lasting a long time. Its name isn’t the proper Greek for it either it’s what they call it in the Cypriot dialect.